This describes installing Linux on a host development machine. If you are interested in installing the development tools, check out Toolchain Build Script

If you can, you should do all your development on a Linux host. If you are unable to find a machine to dedicate to Linux, you can run everything on a Windows Machine with coLinux.

There are many good, and easy Linux distributions to get started. They all have their upsides and down (some more than others). Many distributions are tracked on distrowatch. Popular distributions are not always best, but sometimes having lots of other people using the same software as you can be a good thing, when you are running into a problem.

Please understand that while we attempt to help everyone, there are many things about setting up a development host that are outside the scope of assistance we can offer. If you are having a host side problem - go ask your Linux distribution vendor - not us. If you are having a problem on the target - then we will be glad to attempt to solve the issue.

Zypper is the native command line interface of the ZYpp package manager (sponsored by Novell) for installing, removing, updating and querying software packages of local or remote (networked) media. Its graphical equivalent is the YaST package manager module. It is available in openSUSE since version 10.2 beta1.

You can type this exact sequence from the command line. This has been tested on OpenSuse 11.1, but future versions may vary, but should be close.

Ensure you are using the latest packages for everything on your system:

$ sudo zypper patch

Install all the mandatory prerequisites for building c, c++ and kernel compiling

You can type this exact sequence from the command line. This works on Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016) - other versions, or other apt-get distributions may vary, but should be close.

Ensure you are using the latest packages for everything on your system:

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Install all the mandatory prerequisites for building c, c++ and kernel compiling

Note: In the case that make xconfig makes trouble, you should first try the following:
”sudo update-alternatives --config moc”
and select moc-qt4 for recent bfin kernel (2.6.38 or more recent), and select moc-qt3 in other cases. Do ”make distclean” and you're done. If moc-qt4 is not listed, a system upgrade may be necessary (e.g. Ubuntu requirement: 11.10).
With distribution ”make config_qconfig” (or xconfig), you may need to invoke ”make -C config/kconfig clean” if a build problem occurs.